Samuel Eliot Morison

Samuel Eliot Morison (1887-1976) was a leading American naval historian, biographer, and historian of Puritanism.

Samuel Eliot Morison was born in Boston on July 9, 1887, into a prominent family with deep roots in the Massachusetts past. He attended Harvard, obtaining his doctorate in 1912. There he derived the precept of history as a literary art. His dissertation, concerning Harrison Gray Otis, an ancestor whose papers were in Morison's attic, was sympathetic to the old Federalist.

In 1915 Morison joined the faculty at Harvard. His Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783-1860 (1921) earned him considerable fame. The book traced broad social and economic trends in Massachusetts up to the Civil War. While at Harvard he also served on the American Commission to Negotiate Peace between 1918 and 1919 and was one of the key individuals responsible for drafting the Versailles Treaty. Morison became the first Harmsworth professor of American history at Oxford in 1922, a position he held until his return to Harvard in 1925 to become Trumbull professor of American history. He retired from Harvard in 1955.

Morison's interest in textbooks was evident in 1927, when his Oxford History of the United States appeared. This book became part of the base for The Growth of the American Republic, written in collaboration with Henry Steele Commager, which first appeared in 1930. It also served to point the way to The Oxford History of the American People (1964).

In the 1930s Morison's attention moved toward the Puritans. Builders of the Bay Colony (1930), a collection of biographies, depicted the Puritans as human and fallible with primary religious motivation. He continued his defense of Puritanism with The Puritan Pronaos (1936) and in his institutional history of Harvard. In these works Morison claimed that Puritan thought was rich and sophisticated, that the Puritan had strong ties to England, and that Harvard reflected the social values of Puritan society.

Morison retraced Columbus's voyages as commodore of the "Harvard Columbus Expedition" and turned this experience into Admiral of the Ocean Sea (2 vols., 1942). This work won him a Pulitzer Prize. Morison then joined the Navy as historian and with his staff produced the monumental History of the United States Naval Operations in World War II (15 vols., 1947-1962).

After the war Morison wrote biographies of John Paul Jones, which also earned him a Pulitzer Prize, and Commodore Perry, as well as essays in which he attacked historical relativism. His H.G. Otis: Urbane Federalist (1969) marked a return to the subject of his doctoral dissertation. In The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages (1971) he describes the voyages up to the early 17th century.

In 1964 Morison received the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom and was also elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He remained an active proponent of history until his death in 1976.

Further Reading

Morison's own writings provide insights into his life and professional career. His One Boy's Boston, 1887-1901 (1962) tells as much about Morison as about Boston, and in Vistas of History (1964) he discusses his professional experiences. This work also contains a comprehensive bibliography of Morison's writings to 1964. His historical work is discussed in Michael Kraus, A History of American History (1937) and The Writing of American History (1953). See also John Higham and others, History (1965), and Robert Allen Skotheim, American Intellectual Histories and Historians (1966). □

Morison, Samuel Eliot (1887–1976),professor of American history at Harvard and an editor of The New England Quarterly. His books include Maritime History of Massachusetts (1921); The Oxford History of the United States, 1783–1917 (2 vols., 1927); Builders of the Bay Colony (1930); The Founding of Harvard College (1935); Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century (2 vols., 1936); The Puritan Pronaos (1936), a study of 17th‐century New England intellectual life; Portuguese Voyages to America in the Fifteenth Century (1940); Admiral of the Ocean Sea (1942, Pulitzer Prize), a biography of Columbus; and with H.S. Commager, The Growth of the American Republic (2 vols., 1930, revised 1962). He was the navy's official historian in World War II, and wrote 14 volumes on its many engagements in his History of U.S. Naval Operations (1947–60). The Two‐Ocean War (1963) is a short history of the subject. His study of John Paul Jones (1959) earned him another Pulitzer Prize. One Boy's Boston (1962) is a brief work recalling his youth. Even as he moved into and beyond his eighth decade he continued his publications with his Oxford History of the American People (1965), lives of Commodore Perry (1967), Harrison Gray Otis (1969), a new version of a study issued in 1913, and Champlain (1972); and a major work, The European Discovery of America (2 vols., 1971, 1974).

Samuel Eliot Morison 1887-1976, American historian, b. Boston. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1912 and began teaching history there in 1915, becoming full professor in 1925 and Jonathan Trumbull professor of American history in 1941. Between 1922 and 1925 he was Harmsworth professor of American history at Oxford. Among his earlier books are The Life and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis, Federalist, 1765-1848 (1913) and The Growth of the American Republic (1930, 6th rev. and enl. ed. 1969), written in collaboration with Henry Steele Commager. In 1926, Morison was appointed the official historian of Harvard and commenced to write the Tercentennial History of Harvard College and University, which was completed in 1936 in three volumes. Two of Morison's books won Pulitzer Prizes: Admiral of the Ocean Sea (1942), a biography of Christopher Columbus, and John Paul Jones (1959). In 1942, Morison was commissioned by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to write a history of U.S. naval operations in World War II and given the rank of lieutenant commander (he retired from the navy in 1951 as a rear admiral). The 15 volumes of his History of United States Naval Operations in World War II appeared between 1947 and 1962. Although he retired from Harvard in 1955, Morison continued his research and writing.